After She Left Him
by Vermont Is For Lovers
Summary: During the days following the season 3 finale, Fitz tries to understand why Olivia left him. He drinks a lot of scotch, visits Liv's apartment, and talks to Cyrus, who may be able to help...
1. Weeks 1-6

His time alone was sacred. When he was alone, he tried not to feel much.

He covered his grief over the loss of his son and the loss of Olivia in glasses of scotch, in late nights with dimmed lights, and in quiet moments with his conscious. He thought himself into sadness one hundred times since she left, but never once out of it.

He slept most nights on the couch in the Oval Office with his suit jacket draped over his torso. Mellie never came looking for him, and he didn't go looking for her; everyone had their own way of grieving.

"Look what you did to me, Liv," he whispered one night into the darkness of the Oval. "Look what you did to me."

The missing he felt became an unmoving figure and he was the painter behind the easel trying to make it into something he could see. Rationalizing became an art. She left because a client needed her abroad. She left because a family member needed to be cared for. She left because… When he couldn't fill in the blank, he poured another scotch.

Sometimes, he would absentmindedly write her name in the margins of tax documents or dockets about an upcoming meeting with a prime minister or UN official.

Everyday he felt less. Like the walls of a seaside cave, he disintegrated inside. He had nowhere to put his heart, no one to confess to, and no place to go where he wouldn't feel her pull on him.

One of the nights after she left him, he decided he needed to see it for himself. Hearing that Olivia was gone was one thing, but seeing it would solidify it for him, and he needed that, now especially.

He arranged for Tom to take him to her apartment. Tom was able to acquire the key to her door from her landlord, and Fitz entered the darkness of her apartment as Tom and two other agents stood in the hall.

Fitz stood in the darkness.

Everything was in its proper place aside from an empty wine glass on the end table beside the couch. He put his hands on his hips and stood in the center of the living room. His eyes welled with tears as he noticed the way she draped the cable-knit blanket over the couch, and how the clock they used to count down the end of his marriage so long ago was making a dull ticking sound. The moon cast light on the floor and for a moment Fitz thought everything was going to end, right there in her living room – that all would fade to black and he wouldn't have to wake up to face any of this again.

A sound escaped his throat, uncontrolled and without hesitation. Without any resistance from his body, he fell to his knees and pressed the palms of both hands against the hardwood floors. The sound he made was unfamiliar to him. It was a wail, a sob – the sound of something breaking.

Had she left him a note? Maybe on the kitchen counter there was a sheet of paper with her handwriting centered in the middle of it, explaining everything to him, making sense of what felt like the epitome of devastation. Maybe there was a post-it note stuck to the middle of the headboard in her bedroom that read, "Meet me here, I'll come back to you." Or maybe there wasn't anything in the apartment waiting for him to find it; maybe she left without thinking what his missing her would cost.

The darkness of the room enveloped him as the silence split open. His wails were heavy and coming from the very middle of him. He grew dizzy and thought he might throw up because how could she do this, how could she go, how could she leave him here to face everything that had happened alone, how could she–

Tom grasped his shoulders and lifted him from the floor. The room spun as Fitz tried to blink away the blurring tears.

"Sir?" Tom whispered.

"Take me back," Fitz managed to get out before Tom led him by the arm out of the apartment, down the elevator and out the back exit into the chilly, Washington night.

The nights following his visit to Olivia's apartment were drowned in scotch. During the day, he poured every ounce of attention into the politics at hand and devoted himself to repairing the country and its international relations, because if there was one thing he _could_ repair, it was that.

Cyrus didn't confront him about Olivia's absence and Fitz assumed he didn't want to know. It came as a surprise when Cyrus asked him how he was doing six days after Olivia left.

"You're the president I didn't think you would be," Cyrus said one night, joining Fitz in the Oval Office.

"What do you mean by that?"

"All of this control – these drastic actions of power. Don't get me wrong; I like the clenched fists and angry looks, and I think the public likes them too. People like to see someone take charge."

"It's time for me to show my worth as the leader of the free world."

"I just don't think this presidency is what you're trying to take charge of…" Cyrus trailed off.

"Of course it is," Fitz replied, taking a long drink of his Scotch.

"To be frank, Mr. President, I think what you're trying to take control of is Olivia. Not physically of course, because she's vanished into the proverbial "thin air." But you're trying to take control of something because maybe for the first time during your ever-climbing-rollercoaster-with-no-drop relationship with Olivia, she's out of your reach. You can't have Tom and Hal take you to her or summon her to join you in a restaurant after I have it cleared. There's no sight of a Camp David getaway or a private encounter on the outskirts of this room where the cameras can't see. She's not yours to have, Mr. President, so I see this power-surge and sudden enthusiasm for nearly every political bullet-point as your way to make the rollercoaster finally drop so it can finish its ride and return to its station where you hope she'll be waiting," Cyrus paused for a moment before finishing, "But we both know she's not going to be at that station."

Fitz looked at Cyrus with a furrowed brow and decided to be honest, not for Cyrus' sake, but for his own sanity. He stood up and paced toward the windows behind his desk.

"I fell in love with her. I believed she could save me. And then she left. Like you said, she left the ride and isn't waiting in the station. She packed her things and moved to God knows where and all I can do is wish myself away with her. I'm allowing my spirit to follow behind her and I'm letting her take the best of me. And what do I have to show for it? A broken marriage, a dead son?"

He swirled the scotch around in his glass. He looked at his desk and was flooded with memories of bending her over its edge so he could kiss her neck, of pulling her dress off her shoulders, telling her she was his, he loved her more than she could know.

"Apparently, the relationship we had was–" Fitz stopped and sighed. "I don't know what it was. But she left."

He paused and his expression fell apart. Cyrus sat quietly.

"She left me, Cy. And when someone leaves you behind, you leave yourself behind, too."

Cyrus sat quietly for a moment before responding. "It's against my better judgment, but…"

"What?"

"Sir, I can find her," Cyrus stated.

Fitz turned around sharply. His eyebrows rose and his mouth fell open.

"I can bring her back."


	2. Weeks 7-8, Part I

**Now when you come home / you bring the river with you, / a clamshell in the pocket, a logjam in the head. —D. Kubach**

Fitz had a dream one night, seven weeks after she left him, but realized after he woke up in a cold sweat and nearly shaking that it was the first time since she left that he had a dream about her. In the dream he's older, age and lost time on his bones. He's sitting on a bench in a park somewhere far from the nation's capitol. Olivia takes a seat beside him on the bench. She has a ring on her finger.

"You're married," he says to her.

"Yes."

"Do you love him?"

"Yes."

She stands and reaches out her hand, gesturing for a handshake. A formal end to their informal beginning.

When he woke up, he had to catch his breath. If dreams are any indication of the reality of things, he hoped he wouldn't make it to the day where he would see her married to another man.

From when he was a boy, Fitz's father told him he was sensitive and had too many emotions. If his father was right about anything, it was that. Fitz wound himself up by thinking of the facets of their relationship that led them to this point. What did he do wrong, what did he say to make her leave, when and where and how and why did they break into the fragments he was left to pick up after she left him? He thought about his timeline with Olivia and kneaded himself into sadness, but never once out of it.

Late at night during the seventh week after she left, he laid in darkness on the couch in the Oval and decided he was lying to himself. What he was dealing with, through everything, was someone he loved not loving him.

He stood from the couch and walked to his desk. He opened a drawer, lifted a few folders and documents and pulled out a photo he had saved from their time on the campaign trail. It was a candid shot, a photo someone snapped when they were walking in a hallway in the campaign headquarters. Olivia was looking down and was mid-laugh and he was looking at her, smiling wide and probably in the middle of a joke. Fitz looked at the photo every night and he always saw the same thing, no matter how many glasses of scotch he poured. They were sharing an intimate moment, one of many, and it was just around the time he admitted to himself that he was irrevocably in love with her. He recognized the look on his face as naivety, the look of someone who did not know what was to come because what was happening then and there was all that mattered.

During the eighth week, Cyrus brought him good news.

"Sir, there is someone here to see you," Cyrus said, leaning through the doorframe into the Oval. He stepped aside and she was standing there.

Olivia came back.

A hand came up to cover his mouth and tears welled in his eyes. He was unable to move and in that instant, when he met her eyes for the first time in two months, everything he felt was the same as the moment he first saw her in the auditorium of their campaign headquarters.

Olivia stepped into the Oval and Cyrus closed the door to leave Fitz and Olivia alone.

"Liv," he said, barely audible.

"I can't–," was the first thing she said to him. She looked beautiful. "I can't believe you had me brought here."

"Liv," he said again, walking around his desk.

"You can't just bring me to you, you can't just–"

"I needed to see you. It's been two months. I–" Fitz started before Olivia cut him off.

"You have no right to summon me here, and you know it," she said. She crossed her arms.

"You left me. You left me–" Fitz began before inhaling sharply. "My son died, Olivia. I had to face that, _alone_," Fitz finished. Suddenly he became frustrated. "How could you?" He demanded, clenching his jaw.

"I needed to leave, Fitz. I needed to get out of here, to figure out what was going on in my head before I let it destroy my entire life, before I–"

"You destroyed me."

"Fitz–"

"You left me when I needed you. I needed you here, right _here_," he said with tears in his eyes.

"You needed to grieve. I had taken too much away from you already, and–"

"I was depending on you to understand that this was not something I could get through alone."

"Fitz, I just wanted–"

"I wanted to give up this presidency for you! I built a house for you, a place for us to start over. But you left to start over without me. All I've ever wanted since the day I met you was you. I've only wanted _you_."

Fitz stepped closer.

"But you didn't want me, did you?" he said, lowering his voice. He stepped closer.

Olivia took a step backward, placing her hands on the armrest of the couch.

"Did you want me, Livvie?"

He placed his hands on her hips and brought his face close to hers. The smell of her perfume and shampoo nearly sent him to his knees.

"Do you want me?"

Olivia's eyes closed and her head tilted back when he pressed his body against hers. He had been waiting to feel her like this, to hold her again.

"Olivia," he whispered into her ear.

Suddenly, he kissed her. He leaned into her body and wrapped his arms around her and pulled her into him.

A soft moan escaped from him as her fervently kissed her, his hands running along her sides and back up to hold her face against his. Olivia was kissing him back and although her hands were less exploratory than his, the way her hands wrapped around the back of his neck sent a shiver down his spine.

She pulled away from his kiss and they stared at each other. In that moment, her cheeks flush and her breaths tickling the edge of his lips, she was indescribably beautiful.

The center of her irises were landscapes of planets, ridges cut from moon cheese dyed mahogany and indents left from astronaut boots, and he wondered how many stars filled the space behind them or how many stars it took to create her, or if she was the kind of star to fall or shoot, and if he were to be suspended in her space, how long would her gravity last? Or he wondered if the better question would be how long would it take for his gravity to pull back?


	3. Weeks 7-8, Part II

Fitz and Olivia stood in silence in the Oval Office. She gave away how flustered she was by the way she kept pulling at the hem of her blazer and not making eye contact.

Fitz's love for Olivia was a carnival opening up in his heart and he was the star of the tightrope. It was the nervousness before giving a speech, each nerve pushing up against the underside of his skin. It was realizing that the odds that stood in front of them were a jungle. His love for her was a beginning, an excuse to lose focus on being the leader of the free world, and the answer to his questions.

"When will this be something other than promising ourselves things that we can't make happen?" Olivia said, clearing the silence out of the room.

"It's just a matter of time," he said, but it came out as a whisper because he was afraid to say it with his whole voice because if he used his whole voice, he would have to use his whole self. He didn't know if he meant what he said.

"It's always about timing," she said, using her hands to press down the hem of her blazer.

Fitz didn't want it to be about timing. Time hadn't been on their side. Time wasn't polite and didn't use manners and entered their relationship without asking how they've been or if they were ready for what it would bring.

"For once, can we–" he paused and took her hands in his. "Can we forget about time, and Mellie and Jake and Cyrus and everyone else who doesn't want this to happen? Can we just push everything aside and try, for once, to be honest with each other? Let's be you and me, Livvy. Let's be Fitz and Olivia. Just once."

"I've always wanted that, Fitz. I never stopped wanting that," Olivia said.

"Then why did you leave me?"

"It felt right to me at the time. It's _always_ about timing."

"I just – I never thought you would make me feel that way," Fitz said. He looked down to the floor, ashamed of what he let her do to him while she was gone. He was unraveled.

"Like what?"

"Like I had lost _everything_," his lips hung on the word 'everything.'

"Fitz..."

He walked towards the windows behind his desk as he said, "You tell me too much as happened, that you had to leave, that something propelled you to leave everything and everyone behind. The whole idea of you being gone makes me feel like I'm coming down with something, that this love I have for you is a _sickness_."

He annunciated his words deliberately and continued, "It never used to be a sickness. Us making love _wasn't_ a sickness. Those late nights along the campaign trail were _not_ made of this sickness."

"No, it wasn't a sickness. What we had – have – is not an illness that will go away," Olivia said, stepping toward his desk.

"I'm the President of the United States. I'm arguably the most powerful man in the world. But when it comes to you, I am broken. And I fear that it's in those broken places that I'll stay."

"I want you to fight for me," Olivia blurted out.

Fitz turned to face her, his face scrunched with confusion. Olivia spoke quickly and with her hands.

"I need you to get the divorce. I need you to leave your wife. I need you to prove to me that me staying here is the right thing to do, and that this time, me staying here will make a difference."

Fitz stared at her for a while before responding.

The gravity of his job pressed against his bones since the moment he held is palm up and pledged his allegiance to the United States of America as the nation's president. Fitz was newly inaugurated and had heaps of paperwork to read, men and women to meet, calls to make, domestic and international places to visit, and a duty to uphold decades of work and accomplishments left from the men who preceded him. And yet despite it all, Olivia remained the centripetal force that pulled him off course and into the warm, delicate haze that flooded into his limbs when he was with her.

And now, years and hurtles later, they stood together and the only thing Fitz felt was the sensation of drowning. His love for her was disfigured, pieced together and loosely held together by solemnity.

"Please," Olivia whispered, walking closer to him near the windows. "Fight for me."

Without warning and much to his surprise, he lunged at her, reaching for her face with his hands and fiercely pressing his lips into hers. Fitz spun her around, pushed her against the wall, and held her up against the wall with his hands on her bottom.

Suddenly, he pulled away from the kiss, much to Olivia's dismay as she leaned forward in surprise, and said, "Fight for this _with_ me."

Fitz visited many states and countries as a teenager with a wealthy father who could afford such trips and visited more places after he became a governor. But to him, Olivia was more glamorous and important than the places he visited because she was a country all her own, a place filled with cities and streets and walls to hold everything up. If he could, he would spend everyday walking through her streets leaving breadcrumbs behind him so he could find his way back to the center of her.


	4. Weeks 7-8, Part III

**"If we leave now, there will be / No echo behind us. Just a rush / Of blue darkness like a river / Pouring its guts into the sea" —V. Karp**

The very idea that Olivia was in his city, in his office, in his arms was not something he fully believed or comprehended quite yet.

"I'm going to fight for this because you're going to fight for this, too," he said, his words moving as slowly as his hands running down her back.

Fitz could count the moments Olivia turned him away on two hands but he needed many, many hands to count the moments he knew she loved him. The ratio between the times she walked away and the times she stayed was a buoy he clung too – one outweighed the other.

She leaned into him and pressed her body flush against his. She smelled like rhododendrons, the honey-scented flowers his mother planted in their backyard when he was a child. She rested her head against his chest and he threaded his fingers through her hair.

The weeks that passed without her came to him as spoonfuls of holy confusion. Fitz was in a constant state of unease: where was she? Was she safe? Why did she leave? Even now with her in his arms, his face pale with hope, the gnawing of what was unanswered faintly pressed against his skin.

"I missed you," she whispered.

"I missed you, too," Fitz said, and his happiness was so concentrated that he felt like he could cry.

The moment he knew he wanted to buy her a house he was brushing his teeth. It was 11:30pm, a rather early hour for him to retire to The President's Bedroom. Mellie was sleeping on the other side of the closed door in the master suite, so he took his time in the bathroom, turning his routine before bed into a ritual.

Like most nights - and days - he thought about Olivia in the silent moments. But this particular night, he was trapped in a vortex that continued to pull him into fantasies doused with times they shared and moments he wished were theirs. He was brushing his teeth when he thought to himself, _we need somewhere to go just for us_.

As he rinsed his toothbrush, he thought of places where he could buy a house – or better yet, build one. California was an obvious choice; he new the lay of the land there. But the flight was too long. The house needed to be close enough for a nighttime getaway but far enough from everything that held them down in Washington. Somewhere on the east coast, he though. Cape Cod, off of Massachusetts? Rhode Island, near Providence? _No_, he thought. _Vermont_.

Instead of getting into bed, Fitz went into his private study and opened his laptop. He searched for towns in Vermont with remote areas and acres to build an estate. He came across a small town called Westmore. After looking into the small New England town further, he found land for sale. A particular plot of land caught his eye; it rested on Lake Willoughby, one of the state's most picturesque bodies of water. He pictured Olivia slipping out of a robe and wading into the lake. Fitz's eyes glazed over at the very thought of it.

Fitz researched land, realtors, architects and interior designers for hours. He would make this happen. He needed to make this happen. It was imperative for Olivia and Fitz to have a place to retreat. He was tired of stealing time with her in places that weren't theirs. This would be theirs.

When he drifted to sleep that night, sometime around 3:30am, he thought about what it would feel like to wake up to her every morning, her soft tresses of hair spilling off her pillow, her body radiating with the warmth of the Vermont sunlight, her breathing quieted by the reassuring sound of Lake Willoughby's edges ebbing against the shore, and for a moment it all felt attainable, as though he was holding a ticket for a train he wanted to be on, traveling toward her and what lied ahead. When he reached her there would be no echo behind them – just her hand stretched out for him to hold.

"Let's go to Vermont," he said, leaving a trail of kisses along her neck.

"We can't," Olivia said, her breath choppy as he nibbled at her earlobe.

"We can," Fitz said, and he swept her off her feet and into his arms, and carried her to the couch.

He laid her down on the couch and covered her body with his. He began unbuttoning her blouse, his fingers anxiously pulling at the satin-wrapped buttons. His eyes were filled with promissory hope.

"Fitz–the cameras," she said between gasps. Her hands were tugging at his belt.

"Tom's on tonight," he breathed as he tugged the blouse off her shoulders and nipped at the skin of her collarbone.

Fitz was undone by the feeling of her skin on his lips. Olivia's back arched and pressed into him. She threw her head back as he kissed the crests of her breasts.

When he first made love to Olivia, he felt like he was coming home. It was a long day on the campaign trail. They walked down the hotel hallway, time languidly moving until they reached the door to her room. The last thing Fitz wanted was for Olivia to retreat inside. If she did, he'd mostly likely end up partaking in the minibar in his room and fall asleep with a History Channel special playing, the TV casting fluorescent shapes on the walls. Olivia faced her door, her fingers tracing the edge of the doorknob.

"Go inside," he said.

She hesitated at her door for long few seconds as he stood behind her, fantasizing about her body against his, holding her hands above her head against the wall, taking her in the shower. Slowly, Olivia turned from the door and without making eye contact, led Fitz down the hallway to his room. The moment the heavy door clicked shut behind them in his room, he threw himself at her. He was hungry for her, greedy. Being skin-to-skin with her was a rush, a heavy wave of heat running through his limbs.

And here they were, years later, on a couch in the Oval Office – the result of those nights during the campaign.

Olivia moaned as Fitz unzipped her pants and tugged them down her legs. Deliberately and slowly, he pulled off her lace thong. He flicked his tongue against her core, just as he did that first night. He teased her for a while with his tongue, plunging in and out of her – and then suddenly stopped.

"Vermont," he said, looking up at her.

Olivia, taken off-guard by him suddenly stopping the pleasure, breathed, "What?"

"Vermont is happening."

"Yes," she said.

"I'm not going to continue until you say it."

"Vermont is happening," she said smiling, her eyes glossy and wide.

And with that, he found his way to the center of her again.

Fitz shared a brief exchange with Olivia on her second day working on his campaign. He was about to leave the break room, a cup of hot coffee in hand, when she walked into him. The way the moment played in slow motion was almost cliche, the coffee billowing out of the cup into splashes of spheres before landing on Olivia's navy blazer.

"Oh my god," Fitz gasped, immediately backing away from her and hastily placing the half-emptied cup on the counter beside him. "I'm so sorry, Olivia."

Olivia swiped at the coffee sinking into her blazer, trying to not exacerbate the situation.

"It's fine, it's fine," she said, brushing at the stain with her hands.

Fitz reached for a handful of paper towels and dabbed them on the damp rounded-trapezoidal figure on her blazer. He felt awful. It was day two and he made a fool of himself in front of her yet again. The first time was the day before, when he was left speechless when Olivia asked him why he fired her. He didn't know for sure, but he thought she could tell by the look on his face that there was no going back for him. She arrived in his life and that was it.

"How much was it?" He asked, tossing the soiled paper towels in the waste bin.

"What?" Olivia asked, confused.

"The blazer. How much was it? I'd like to buy you a new one."

"That's not necessary."

He was embarrassed. "I would really like to make it up to you."

"Really, it's fine. No big deal," Olivia said, offering him a smile.

"At least let me make you a cup of coffee?"

"I don't drink coffee," she almost laughed, "But thank you."

She turned and left the break room. Fitz stood in the doorway, embarrassed.

Weeks after the coffee-spill, during that first night shared together, he laid next to Olivia as she slept soundly. Her hair was sprawled across her pillow and a sheet was spun around the middle of her. Her chest rose and fell as her breathing filled the silence of nighttime in the room. For a while, time spun around them, like ribbons.

Even in the current moment they were sharing, time spun around them as they unraveled into one another, their moans muffled by each others' shoulders, hands grasping for something to hold as the earth shook off the dust within them. Despite the fact that Olivia was in his arms and he had her in that moment, Fitz found the leftover feeling of traumatized grief creeping into the edges of skin.

_Sometimes you have to live with things_, he thought during one of the nights after she left him. Scotch left warm remnants on his tongue as he drifted to sleep on the couch in the Oval. He knew this would happen, he knew this would happen because it was just a matter of time, it was always just a matter of time. It rained in his dreams that night and when he woke up in the early hours of the morning, he saw sunlight like stripes of white paint running across the palm of his upturned hand. He thought about Olivia and how time brought them to this place and he wanted to ask someone why it had to be that way. The morning unraveled like thread from a spool; he curled into the shape of his grief and sailed back into sleep before he could think himself into sadness again.


End file.
